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Student Newspaper of the University of Southern California Since 1912 | www.dailytrojan.com | VOL. 172, NO. 25 | Wednesday February 16, 2011
Agent policy: USC announced new
regulations for contact between
agents and athletes. PAGE 12
InDEX 2 · News Digest 4 · Opinion 5 · Lifestyle 8 · Classifieds 10 · Crossword 12 · Sports
Robin Laird | Daily Trojan
Mr. Roboto · Steve Canepa, IBM’s general manager, hosted a watch party Tuesday to view
the launch of Watson on Jeopardy! . Students were impressed by the system’s language skills.
By corinne gaston
Daily Trojan
Jeopardy! pitted the man versus the ma-chine
Monday night, as Watson, a comput-ing
system that uses Question Answering
technology, was quicker than its human op-ponents
in 24 out of 30 “Double Jeopardy”
questions.
Members of the Viterbi School of
Engineering’s Information Sciences
Institute are among a group of scientists
from eight universities who are working
to advance Watson, which was designed
by IBM to understand human language
and language complexities and to provide
answers to factual questions.
Watson, named after IBM founder
Thomas J. Watson, sorts through its exten-sive
database and tries to provide precise
answers quickly. Watson is even able to un-derstand
different attributes of human lan-guage
such as rhyming, alliteration, slang,
riddles and puns.
Steve Canepa, IBM’s general manager,
hosted a watch party at University Gateway
on Tuesday for students to watch Watson’s
Jeopardy! debut.
“It takes Watson an average of three sec-onds
to answer a question,” said Jennifer
Chu-Carroll, a research staff member and
manager at the IBM T.J. Watson Research
Center. “And it looks through a database of
over 1 million books.”
Chu-Carroll has worked on many parts
of the Watson system, focusing primarily
on developing the system’s ability to
quickly narrow down the information in
its repertoire to what is relevant to the
question being asked. Watson finds about
100 sentences that it thinks could contain
the answer and ranks the possibilities in
order of confidence.
“If Watson is 90 percent sure, it’ll buzz its
answer in. If it’s 40 percent sure, it probably
won’t,” Chu-Carroll said.
Students who attended the watch par-ty
were intrigued by Watson’s grasp of the
English language.
“When you consider all the nuances of
the human language, it’s impressive that
Watson understands so much of it,” said
Peter Perez, a graduate student studying en-gineering
management.
Members of Viterbi’s ISI first became in-volved
with IBM in 2001, but only as part of
a government-funded research program.
Inspired by the QA technology that many
universities were developing in their labs,
IBM scientists designed Watson over the
course of about seven years and then in-vited
other scientists from universities
such as USC, the Massachusetts Institute
of Technology, Carnegie Mellon University
and the University of Texas to collaborate
on the project. USC has had QA technology
for about 10 years, but it was separate from
the Watson project.
The ISI team specifically contributed
to Watson’s parsing ability, the process of
Viterbi helps IBM create
a new computing robot
Watson, a machine that understands
human language, was unveiled Monday.
| see watson, page 3 |
By ashley M. williams
Daily Trojan
The U.S. State Department re-cently
released a statement caution-ing
students about traveling abroad
during spring break, but many USC
students said they are still planning
to head to popular vacation spots
such as Cabo, Cancun and Puerto
Vallarta.
“I’m not worried about any type of
threats and I’m really excited about
going to Mexico,” said Victoria
Willingham, a sophomore majoring
in psychology and Spanish.
The State Department report-ed
that each year U.S. citizens have
been badly injured or killed in acci-dents,
falls and other mishaps while
traveling abroad. Many of these in-cidents
have been related to alcohol
and drug use.
Other spring break vacation-ers
have been sexually assaulted or
robbed because, according to the
State Department, they found them-selves
in unfamiliar locales and were
incapable of protecting themselves.
More than 2,500 U.S. citizens are
arrested while abroad every year.
Nearly half of the travelers arrested
each year were for narcotics charg-es
that include having very small
amounts of illegal substances in
their possession.
The State Department issued the
advisory on spring breaks to raise
students’ awareness. It noted, how-ever,
that the majority of students
will have safe and enjoyable adven-tures.
Juan Espinoza, a junior major-ing
in communication and inter-national
relations, said he believes
most students can stay out of trou-ble
while in Mexico.
“Mexico is safe. Most of the vio-lence
is connected to drug cartels,”
Espinoza said. “So if students aren’t
engaged in those activities they will
be fine.”
Elizabeth Chau, a sophomore ma-joring
in international relations, said
she does not plan to travel outside of
the country during spring break be-cause
she is concerned for her safety.
“The risk is too great,” Chau said.
“You have no idea what could hap-pen
to you right now with every-thing
going on.”
Government wants spring
break travelers to be alert
More than 2,500 U.S. citizens
are arrested each year while
abroad, the government said.
| see break, page 3 |
By rachel bracker
Daily Trojan
The Undergraduate Student
Government Elections
Commission determined that
presidential candidate Monish
Tyagi committed a minor violation
of the elections code by having
campaign materials present where
alcohol was consumed or present.
Tyagi and running mate Logan
Lachman will be not be allowed to
wear their campaign T-shirts for
one hour today.
“The Tyagi-Lachman campaign
was found in violation of wearing
campaign material in an unap-proved
location,” said Barb Solish,
the USG Elections Commission
chair. “However, the commission
determined the intent of both the
code and the candidates as well as
circumstance warranted a minor
sanction.”
Tyagi and Lachman will not be
allowed to wear their campaign
T-shirts today from 2 p.m. to 3 p.m.
Vice presidential candidate
Rohan Mehra, who is running with
Alex Fadil, filed the formal com-plaint
against Tyagi on Monday.
The complaint included two
photos that show Tyagi wearing
a campaign shirt at a nighttime
event with a DJ in the background.
The complaint suggested alcohol
could have been present, given the
setting of the photo.
“The intention of the rule is to
not to use alcohol in a way to pro-mote
or entice people into your
campaign in any way,” Tyagi said.
“In the code it states that alcohol
may not be used at any campaign
events, and I think it’s very clear
that this was not a campaign
event.”
All three presidential tickets
confirmed that they agreed before
the election to discuss such allega-tions
with each other before filing
any complaints.
Mehra said no malice was
Minor sanctions for Tyagi-Lachman ticket
Tyagi and Lachman will not
be allowed to wear campaign
T-shirts for one hour today.
Cory Sanford | Daily Trojan
Rock the vote · Steven Ilami, a freshman majoring in computer science,
and Anatashia Lewis, a senior majoring in public relations, cast their votes.
| see usg, page 3 |
Join the Jesse. M Unruh Institute of Politics and the Daily Trojan today
for a panel discussion about Steven Colbert and John Stewart.
Food will be served at 11:30 a.m.
Discussion begins at noon in the Rosen Family Screening Room
in the Ronald Tutor Campus Center.
s t u d e n t s
TALKBACK

Student Newspaper of the University of Southern California Since 1912 | www.dailytrojan.com | VOL. 172, NO. 25 | Wednesday February 16, 2011
Agent policy: USC announced new
regulations for contact between
agents and athletes. PAGE 12
InDEX 2 · News Digest 4 · Opinion 5 · Lifestyle 8 · Classifieds 10 · Crossword 12 · Sports
Robin Laird | Daily Trojan
Mr. Roboto · Steve Canepa, IBM’s general manager, hosted a watch party Tuesday to view
the launch of Watson on Jeopardy! . Students were impressed by the system’s language skills.
By corinne gaston
Daily Trojan
Jeopardy! pitted the man versus the ma-chine
Monday night, as Watson, a comput-ing
system that uses Question Answering
technology, was quicker than its human op-ponents
in 24 out of 30 “Double Jeopardy”
questions.
Members of the Viterbi School of
Engineering’s Information Sciences
Institute are among a group of scientists
from eight universities who are working
to advance Watson, which was designed
by IBM to understand human language
and language complexities and to provide
answers to factual questions.
Watson, named after IBM founder
Thomas J. Watson, sorts through its exten-sive
database and tries to provide precise
answers quickly. Watson is even able to un-derstand
different attributes of human lan-guage
such as rhyming, alliteration, slang,
riddles and puns.
Steve Canepa, IBM’s general manager,
hosted a watch party at University Gateway
on Tuesday for students to watch Watson’s
Jeopardy! debut.
“It takes Watson an average of three sec-onds
to answer a question,” said Jennifer
Chu-Carroll, a research staff member and
manager at the IBM T.J. Watson Research
Center. “And it looks through a database of
over 1 million books.”
Chu-Carroll has worked on many parts
of the Watson system, focusing primarily
on developing the system’s ability to
quickly narrow down the information in
its repertoire to what is relevant to the
question being asked. Watson finds about
100 sentences that it thinks could contain
the answer and ranks the possibilities in
order of confidence.
“If Watson is 90 percent sure, it’ll buzz its
answer in. If it’s 40 percent sure, it probably
won’t,” Chu-Carroll said.
Students who attended the watch par-ty
were intrigued by Watson’s grasp of the
English language.
“When you consider all the nuances of
the human language, it’s impressive that
Watson understands so much of it,” said
Peter Perez, a graduate student studying en-gineering
management.
Members of Viterbi’s ISI first became in-volved
with IBM in 2001, but only as part of
a government-funded research program.
Inspired by the QA technology that many
universities were developing in their labs,
IBM scientists designed Watson over the
course of about seven years and then in-vited
other scientists from universities
such as USC, the Massachusetts Institute
of Technology, Carnegie Mellon University
and the University of Texas to collaborate
on the project. USC has had QA technology
for about 10 years, but it was separate from
the Watson project.
The ISI team specifically contributed
to Watson’s parsing ability, the process of
Viterbi helps IBM create
a new computing robot
Watson, a machine that understands
human language, was unveiled Monday.
| see watson, page 3 |
By ashley M. williams
Daily Trojan
The U.S. State Department re-cently
released a statement caution-ing
students about traveling abroad
during spring break, but many USC
students said they are still planning
to head to popular vacation spots
such as Cabo, Cancun and Puerto
Vallarta.
“I’m not worried about any type of
threats and I’m really excited about
going to Mexico,” said Victoria
Willingham, a sophomore majoring
in psychology and Spanish.
The State Department report-ed
that each year U.S. citizens have
been badly injured or killed in acci-dents,
falls and other mishaps while
traveling abroad. Many of these in-cidents
have been related to alcohol
and drug use.
Other spring break vacation-ers
have been sexually assaulted or
robbed because, according to the
State Department, they found them-selves
in unfamiliar locales and were
incapable of protecting themselves.
More than 2,500 U.S. citizens are
arrested while abroad every year.
Nearly half of the travelers arrested
each year were for narcotics charg-es
that include having very small
amounts of illegal substances in
their possession.
The State Department issued the
advisory on spring breaks to raise
students’ awareness. It noted, how-ever,
that the majority of students
will have safe and enjoyable adven-tures.
Juan Espinoza, a junior major-ing
in communication and inter-national
relations, said he believes
most students can stay out of trou-ble
while in Mexico.
“Mexico is safe. Most of the vio-lence
is connected to drug cartels,”
Espinoza said. “So if students aren’t
engaged in those activities they will
be fine.”
Elizabeth Chau, a sophomore ma-joring
in international relations, said
she does not plan to travel outside of
the country during spring break be-cause
she is concerned for her safety.
“The risk is too great,” Chau said.
“You have no idea what could hap-pen
to you right now with every-thing
going on.”
Government wants spring
break travelers to be alert
More than 2,500 U.S. citizens
are arrested each year while
abroad, the government said.
| see break, page 3 |
By rachel bracker
Daily Trojan
The Undergraduate Student
Government Elections
Commission determined that
presidential candidate Monish
Tyagi committed a minor violation
of the elections code by having
campaign materials present where
alcohol was consumed or present.
Tyagi and running mate Logan
Lachman will be not be allowed to
wear their campaign T-shirts for
one hour today.
“The Tyagi-Lachman campaign
was found in violation of wearing
campaign material in an unap-proved
location,” said Barb Solish,
the USG Elections Commission
chair. “However, the commission
determined the intent of both the
code and the candidates as well as
circumstance warranted a minor
sanction.”
Tyagi and Lachman will not be
allowed to wear their campaign
T-shirts today from 2 p.m. to 3 p.m.
Vice presidential candidate
Rohan Mehra, who is running with
Alex Fadil, filed the formal com-plaint
against Tyagi on Monday.
The complaint included two
photos that show Tyagi wearing
a campaign shirt at a nighttime
event with a DJ in the background.
The complaint suggested alcohol
could have been present, given the
setting of the photo.
“The intention of the rule is to
not to use alcohol in a way to pro-mote
or entice people into your
campaign in any way,” Tyagi said.
“In the code it states that alcohol
may not be used at any campaign
events, and I think it’s very clear
that this was not a campaign
event.”
All three presidential tickets
confirmed that they agreed before
the election to discuss such allega-tions
with each other before filing
any complaints.
Mehra said no malice was
Minor sanctions for Tyagi-Lachman ticket
Tyagi and Lachman will not
be allowed to wear campaign
T-shirts for one hour today.
Cory Sanford | Daily Trojan
Rock the vote · Steven Ilami, a freshman majoring in computer science,
and Anatashia Lewis, a senior majoring in public relations, cast their votes.
| see usg, page 3 |
Join the Jesse. M Unruh Institute of Politics and the Daily Trojan today
for a panel discussion about Steven Colbert and John Stewart.
Food will be served at 11:30 a.m.
Discussion begins at noon in the Rosen Family Screening Room
in the Ronald Tutor Campus Center.
s t u d e n t s
TALKBACK